J 903.] E. H. Walsli —Tibetan Language , 8f Decent Dictionaries. 71 
O ft o t \ 
archaic, or gone out of present use, with a Swastika > but the 
total number of words so marked is only 188 words in large type and 65 
words and expressions under small type ; a total of 263 words, in the 
whole Dictionary of 1353 pages; so that this indication is of little value, 
and it is difficult to see on what ground these particular words have been 
selected rather than others. 
It is not implied, by the above remarks, that the present Dictionary 
does not contain the colloquial language at all. It does so, and to a 
larger extent than previous dictionaries, but what is colloquial is not 
distinguished from what is literary. 
- It may be argued that in a Tibetan-English Dictionary this is not so 
necessary as it would be in an English-Tibetan Dictionary, inas¬ 
much as the person who looks for any word, himself knows the 
source from which he has obtained it. This may be so, but at the same 
time, the person who hears for the first time a colloquial word spoken 
by a common Tibetan, if he succeeds in finding it in the Dictionary, 
would like to know whether it were also an accepted word in literature, 
and the person looking out a word found in a book would at the same 
time like to know whether it is a word which would be understood if he 
used it in ordinary conversation. 
As shewing the complete divergence between the literary and 
spoken languages, we cannot do better than translate the following 
passage from M. Desgodins* preface to his Grammar of spoken Tibetan. 1 
Speaking of the early writers who formed the literary language 
from the seventh century of our era onwards, he says: “They have 
formed for Tibet a sacred language. This language has never been 
understood except by those who have made a special study of it; it has 
not penetrated into the usage of the people, who have preserved their 
own dialects and their own patois , leaving to rare scholars, lamas, or 
laymen, the care of reading, understanding and explaining, if they are 
able, the sacred books. These scholars themselves never speak as their 
books are written, and if anyone were to speak this language to them, 
either they would not understand him, or they would say, “ One writes 
in that way, but speaks quite differently. * ” 
As regards any but these rare scholars, one may confidently endorse 
the first alternative and say that no one else if so addressed would under¬ 
stand the language at all. 
In considering this divergence, it will be well to give a brief outline 
of the growth of the Tibetan literary language from the time when 
l Essai de Grammaire Thibetaine, ponr la language parlee, par A. Desgodins, 
Hongkong. Imprimerie do Naweth. 1899. 
